Some reflections from Matt Webb on their accelerator’s office hours:

4. There is often a crisis. Fixing the issue is not my job.

A special type of Office Hours is when there’s a crisis. I would characterise a crisis as any time the founder brings urgency into the room–whether it’s good or bad. There are times when sales are going just too well! “A great problem to have” can trigger a panicked response just as a more existential crisis such as an unhappy team.

I have to remind myself that fixing the issue is not my primary job. Participating in panic validates panic as a response. But if a startup responded to every crisis with panic, nothing would get done. (I would characterise panic as short-termist thinking, accompanied by a stressed and unpleasant emotional state.)

What makes this challenging is that I often know what they’re going through. Sometimes I recognise a situation and my own emotional memories well up. There have been sessions where my heart races, or my palms sweat, or I look from team member to team member and wonder if they realise the dynamic they’ve found themselves in.

So before we talk about the issue, I try to find the appropriate emotional response: enthusiastically cheer first sales (but don’t sit back on laurels); get pissed off about bad news but move on with good humour; treat obstacles with seriousness but don’t over-generalise. It’s a marathon not a sprint, and so on.

Then use the situation to talk tactics and build some habits. I like to encourage:

  1. Writing things down. Startups are not about product, they are about operationalising sales of that product. Operationalising means there is a machine. The minimum viable machine is a google doc with a checklist. The sales process can be a checklist. HR can be a checklist. Bookkeeping can be a checklist. When things don’t work, revise the checklist. Eventually, turn it into software and people following specific job objectives. This is how (a) the startup can scale where revenue scales faster than cost of sale; and (b) the founder can one day take a holiday.
  2. A habit of momentum. I forget who said to me “first we figure out how to row the boat, then we choose the direction” but movement is a team habit. If, in every meeting, i respond to a business update with “so, what are you doing about that” then that expectation of action will eventually get internalised

I find these viewpoints sink in better when they’re using in responding to a crisis.

I also like to encourage self-honesty. Sometimes my job is to say out loud things which are unsaid. Founders are very good at being convincing (both themselves and others) otherwise they wouldn’t be founders. Sometimes that data that doesn’t fit the narrative is left out… to others and to themselves. So I can help break that down.

There will be crises and crises and crises. But we only have these Office Hours for 12 weeks. If we concentrate on fixing just today’s issue, we miss the opportunity to build habits that can handle tomorrow’s.